


distortion

by Marcia Elena (marciaelena)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s04e09 Terma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 01:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14414565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marciaelena/pseuds/Marcia%20Elena
Summary: Written for the Cube's 'When Cubes Collide' Challenge, a.k.a. the Canon vs. Fanon Challenge, August 2003.





	distortion

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cube's 'When Cubes Collide' Challenge, a.k.a. the Canon vs. Fanon Challenge, August 2003.

No arm, no test. 

That was the assurance that the peasants he'd met in the woods had given him, the words they kept repeating to him while they hacked off his arm. Over and over again, as a means of soothing him, maybe; consoling him for the loss of his limb. A regrettable event, yet necessary. 

Stupid fucking bastards. 

Krycek is not entirely aware of the logic that had led them to believe they'd be left alone if they were missing their left arms. Something to do with the vaccine, most likely. While he waits to be transported to a hospital, he has time to ponder this, but his mind is clouded by pain, and he might be missing a vital clue or two. Not that it makes much difference; whatever their conjecture had been, it was a flawed one, and it did not save them. 

Since he's been found and returned to the camp, every one-armed man in the area has been rounded up and brought in. They might, in the end, be unsuitable for Black Oil exposure, for any number of reasons. But there are other tests being conducted here, tests which most of the camp's population is blissfully ignorant of. Knowledge of these tests would be denied by the people involved in them, all details about them classified and compartmentalized so as to allow little chance of discovery. And yet the tests are very real, and are being carried on even now, deep in the bunkers, where the subjects' screams never reach anyone's ears but their own. 

The only requirement one apparently needs to have as a possible candidate for these tests is being alive. Krycek has been told by the camp's supervisor, as a joke, that the newly arrived prisoners fill that condition quite nicely, despite their disfigurement. 

Funny how Krycek doesn't feel particularly alive at the moment. 

His conscience--yes, he has a conscience, even though he knows Mulder would fiercely disavow any claims he makes to it--weighs heavily on him in some moments, a difficult thing to bear. Yet the absence that now exists in place of his arm is just as heavy, and constant. It drags at him, allows room for nothing else. 

No pity for himself. 

No clemency for them.


End file.
